Travel Blog: Life of a Travel Writer
The Op-Ed Page is the New Travel Section
by Michael Yessis | 07.25.05 | 10:00 PM ET
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: Sometimes the best newspaper travel stories don’t appear in the travel section. For the third day in a row, a great travel story has appeared in the op-ed pages of either the New York Times or the Los Angeles Times. On the heels of Bob Greene’s excellent Saturday piece in the New York Times, columnist David Brooks took a break from political mudslinging Sunday with a column about flying with children. It’s not a subject that immediately brings to mind Picasso, but Brooks makes the comparison with his trademark wit.
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Yahoo! BuzzTransitions Abroad’s New Travel Writing Portal
by Jim Benning | 07.22.05 | 11:15 AM ET
Transitions Abroad has put together a terrific resource page for aspiring travel writers that features a moderated forum, as well as links to interviews, blogs, market leads and travel writers’ organizations. The page also includes book suggestions from a number of writers and editors, inlcuding yours truly. Travel writing is an awfully tough way to make a living, so it’s great to see that Tim Leffel, the mastermind behind this portal, introduces it with an unflinching look at the difficult realities of the business.
“Africa is the Last Place Where People Can Go and Find Someone Who Will Listen to Them”
by Jim Benning | 07.19.05 | 1:23 PM ET
The Telegraph just published an article about Paul Theroux, who is promoting his new novel, “Blinding Light.” The article’s author sat down with Theroux at a Boston hotel, expecting the novelist to be cranky, but found him “curious, patient - if inadvertently evasive - and solicitous.”
“WE SAW LANCE!!!!! WHOOOOO!”
by Jim Benning | 07.14.05 | 12:50 PM ET
Anyone even vaguely familiar with competitive cyling can appreciate yesterday’s weblog post from Rick Steves’ son, Andrew, who is on his first parent-free trip to Europe and watching the Tour de France. His entire post: “WE SAW LANCE!!!!! WHOOOOO! Pictures coming in a couple days, check em out!!!”
Far Flung Magazine
by Jim Benning | 07.14.05 | 10:58 AM ET
A new online travel magazine called Far Flung popped up recently with a sharp look and a take on travel that we can relate to. “Far Flung leaves logistics to more informed people with boardrooms and buzzwords,” Editor Drew Irwin writes. “Our job is to present the story of people creating a geography defined more by experience than by grids, numbers and connection speeds.”
Travel Junkets: On the Way Out or More Popular Than Ever?
by Michael Yessis | 07.11.05 | 12:19 AM ET
Rick Steves on ‘60 Minutes’
by Jim Benning | 05.24.05 | 10:55 PM ET
Our apologies for the dearth of weblog updates. We’re busy working on the next generation of World Hum. But we had to note that Rick Steves, Europe travel guru to the PBS-viewing masses, will be featured on CBS’ “60 Minutes” tomorrow night—Wednesday, May 25—at 8 p.m., 7 p.m. Central. According to a press release from Steves’ company, a CBS crew taped footage at Steves’ offices in Washington state, as well as on the road in Europe. There was no mention of Steves on the show’s Web page Tuesday.
Dave Eggers on Fiction and Travel and Climbing Kilimanjaro
by Jim Benning | 05.05.05 | 10:54 PM ET
Cleo Paskal, What’s the Biggest Reward of Life as a Travel Writer?
by Jim Benning | 04.20.05 | 9:29 PM ET
Writing “Backpack Nation”
by Jim Benning | 04.14.05 | 9:24 PM ET
O’Hanlon Gets His Close-Up
by Michael Yessis | 02.17.05 | 1:21 AM ET
Bravo, Jon Stewart! Monday night on The Daily Show he went where few other television hosts have gone before: he had a travel writer as a guest. Redmond O’Hanlon promoted his new book, Trawler, with tales of adventure on the high seas as well as an ancient sea creature that he presented to Stewart—in a jar, wrapped in a pair of boxer shorts. O’Hanlon, it seems, knows how to make an impression. In a profile in Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle, John Flinn called his travel books “among the most hilarious, most harrowing, most learned and most deliciously twisted ever written.” Flinn continued: “He’s not nearly as well known as he ought to be, but those who do what he does put him at the very top of the field. When I asked two writers I admire, Tim Cahill and Bill Bryson, which writers they admire, they both cited O’Hanlon without hesitation. Bryson calls him ‘probably the finest writer of travel books in the English language, and certainly the most daring.’ He also calls him ‘wonderfully odd.’” Anyone who saw him on The Daily Show will probably agree.
Welcome to Swagland
by Michael Yessis | 01.19.05 | 10:05 PM ET
It’s not a destination, but “a wondrous alternate universe concocted by publicists, funded by corporations eager for media coverage of their wares and frequented by journalists who have cast off concerns about conflicts of interest and embraced a new creed of conspicuous consumption,” writes Los Angeles Times magazine. And who are some of the major visitors to Swagland? Travel writers. Weddle offers an uncommonly deep examination of swag—an acronym for “stolen without a gun” or “sh*t we all get”—with a special nod to the travel junket. “The junket gives travel bureaus, resorts and hotels the biggest bang for their buck, far more than they could get by taking out ads in major magazines or newspapers,” he writes. “Full-page ads in national magazines run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. In contrast, it might cost a grand to fly a writer to a hotel or resort for a weekend junket, and the results are far more effective.”
Anthony Bourdain, What Would You Eat For Your Last Meal?
by Jim Benning | 12.16.04 | 5:31 PM ET
“Roasted bone marrow, sprinkled with a little sea salt; toasted French bread to spread it on,” the globe-trotting chef and writer said in a thoughtful interview in yesterday’s San Diego Union-Tribune. Of the half a dozen or so celebrity chefs in the media spotlight these days, Bourdain is the one who has written seriously about adventure travel—and adventurous dining.
Carey in Japan
by Michael Yessis | 12.13.04 | 5:40 PM ET
Australian novelist Peter Carey’s next book focuses on a trip to Japan he took with his 12-year-old son Charlie. Their mission: to explore the worlds of manga and anime. Travel + Leisure’s Amy Farley quizzes him about his trip in the December issue. “Wrong in Japan,” the book about the trip, comes out next month.
Et Tu, New York Times?
by Michael Yessis | 12.06.04 | 5:45 PM ET
The Gray Lady debuted the redesign of its travel section Sunday—without the personal essay column. We hope this is an anomaly and it will be back next week. If it’s gone for good, how sad. The Times has been the only major U.S. newspaper we know of that consistently gives travel writers a forum to look inward. It recognizes that travel sometimes involves a personal journey as well as a physical one. If the Times has done away with the essay, the philosophical dialogue among travelers will continue here and in other places, of course, but millions of newspaper readers in the U.S. will no longer be able to participate, and that’s a shame. The timing of the essay elimination is a bit ironic, considering that Sunday’s New York Times Book Review heralds the latest crop of narrative travel books. The headline? Choice of Literary Travel Guides Is Expanding.
